Donnerstag, 28. März 2019

The meaning of the PE (II):

Bruce Charlton:

"If peak experiences are not a guarantee of objective truth; what do they signify? My hunch is that a scientific PE is some kind of personal guarantee of the subjective truth of an insight. In other words, scientific PEs are a marker which the mind attaches to those of its insights the mind considers most profound - albeit having made that decision largely as a result of subconscious, inaccessible processing. The PE is therefore a signal that states: 'This is good stuff, by your standards - maybe the best you are capable of, under current circumstances. Don't ignore it, don't forget it, and try to understand it'. The PE seems to function as a means of focusing attention - the characteristic emotion asserts that the marked insight is something we should dwell upon, puzzle over, sort out - do something about. It seems to me that a vital component of the PE is exactly this sense of a call to action in the sense of making a decision, changing our lives. The PE is not - or should not be - simply a passive feeling of happiness and insight. Indeed, episodes of quiescent bliss and idiosyncratically personal insight are easily confused with PEs."

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"Peak experiences may be associated with insights that are wrong but for the right reasons. In other words, the scientist has done the best possible job of making sense of things at that particular stage in history - but later developments will overthrow their insight."

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"The typical insight associated with a PE is integrative in nature, with the sense of meaningfulness that comes from assembling the right things in the right order to make some kind of sense from them."

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"The peak experience of scientific creativity does not merely constitute a simple elegant and compelling arrangement of data that is already in the mind; the PE involves an insight into which of facts are the important ones, and how they are related to one another by causal processes."

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